


Transient

by deathwailart



Series: Damhnait Mahariel [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Backstory, Dalish Origin, Gen, Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 18:04:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1950900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dalish elves have never had a home and Damhnait knows she will never have one, not even when she becomes Warden-Commander and Hero.</p>
<p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: transient</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transient

She's never known a home, not the way most people – shems really, always bloody shems – think of home. She has perhaps known most of Thedas and it was their home once, wasn't it? This was their empire, their home, all their vast world spread forth when their gods were still with them and not simply precious carvings around camp and the vallaslin they each sport with pride. Once they were old as the mountains and walked the Beyond proudly. Now it is gone and they wander, homeless and yet not all at once. She looks at her feet with soles hard as leather by now and thinks of every mile she has walked in her life. Ashalle told her once that the Dalish must be like their halla, ready to get up and run as soon as they're born and she believes it. They help their young and their old and their sick but each must carry their own weight as soon as they are able, remembering the stories of the days of long ago.  
  
She has slept beneath the open stars, peeking out of the aravels, curled by Ashalle as a child, then sharing with the other children – Tamlen of course, she can't remember a life without Tamlen, and Fenarel and Junar and then Merrill, this new girl with magic like the days of old in her blood who was quiet as a mouse with such huge eyes. Then it was her and Ashalle again when she grew older, Merrill too if she didn't sleep by the Keeper's side.  
  
They had Elvhenan and immortality then the Tevinters sank Arlathan. They had the Dales and then came the Exalted Marches. They have lost their gods, their home twice over, their own people – those flat ears in the cities who forget their heritage, elves she has only glimpsed in passing who look like her and yet not. Damhnait walks tall and proud, bares her teeth at the shemlen that come too close to camp or spit insults or worse at them, hisses and matches their words for arrows.  
  
"We carry our home with us," Ashalle told her once when she was small and tired from a long day of walking, leaving one camp (one home, if she calls each place they set up camp a home, how many times has she had to leave them behind, how many times have her people lost every home, no matter how short their stay?) for another, Ashalle hoisting her up, elbows under Damhnait's bony scabbed knees.  
  
"Like snails?" She'd had a snail for a while, it had crawled in and she'd kept it, painted the shell pretty colours until one day the snail was gone.  
  
"A little like a snail. The dirt beneath our feet – that is home. The vallaslin – that is home."  
  
She doesn't remember if there was more. She tries not to think about how that seems to sum up the lot of their people; we forget, we cannot remember, our homes slip through our fingers, she tries not to dream of a world conjured up by stories when they were young and so was the world but the lurch in her stomach whenever she hears the word home never leaves her, not even when she's grown with stark black lines in honour of Falon'Din, not even when she is made to leave and drinks Darkspawn blood and loses everything, not even when she vanquishes an Archdemon and gains Vigil's Keep.  
  
She has never, will never, have a home.


End file.
